He wandered about while the reporter made a fire and set the coffee pot to boil.  Bassett, glancing up once, saw him surveying the ruined lean-to from the doorway, with an expression he could not understand.  But he did not say anything, nor did he speak again until Bassett called him to get some food.  Even then he was laconic, and he seemed to be listening and waiting.

Once something startled the horses outside, and he sat up and listened.

“They’re here!” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Bassett replied, and went to the doorway.  “No,” he called back over his shoulder, “you go on and finish.  I’ll watch.”

“Come back and eat,” Dick said surlily.

He ate very little, but drank of the coffee.  Bassett too ate almost nothing.  He was pulling himself together for the struggle that was to come, marshaling his arguments for flight, and trying to fathom the extent of the change in the man across the small table.

Dick put down his tin cup and got up.  He was strong again, and the nightmare confusion of the night had passed away.  Instead of it there was a desperate lucidity and a courage born of desperation.  He remembered it all distinctly; he had killed Howard Lucas the night before.  Before long Wilkins or some of his outfit would ride up to the door, and take him back to Norada.  He was not afraid of that.  They would always think he had run away because he was afraid of capture, but it was not that.  He had run away from Bev’s face.  Only he had not got away from it.  It had been with him all night, and it was with him now.

But he would have to go back.  He couldn’t be caught like a rat in a trap.  The Clarks didn’t run away.  They were fighters.  Only the Clarks didn’t kill.  They fought, but they didn’t murder.

He picked up his hat and went to the door.

“Well, you’ve been mighty kind, old man,” he said.  “But I’ve got to go back.  I ran last night like a scared kid, but I’m through with that sort of foolishness.”

“I’d give a good bit,” Bassett said, watching him, “to know what made you run last night.  You were safe where you were.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Dick said drearily.  “I didn’t run from them.  I ran to get away from something.”  He turned away irritably.  “You wouldn’t understand.  Say I was drunk.  I was, for that matter.  I’m not over it yet.”

Bassett watched him.

“I see,” he said quietly.  “It was last night, was it, that this thing happened?”

“You know it, don’t you?”

“And, after it happened, do you remember what followed?”

“I’ve been riding all night.  I didn’t care what happened.  I knew I’d run into a whale of a blizzard, but I—­”

He stopped and stared outside, to where the horses grazed in the upland meadow, knee deep in mountain flowers.  Bassett, watching him, saw the incredulity in his eyes, and spoke very gently.